.05 “what happens when people open their hearts? they get better.”

it’s so easy these days to put up a facade. one of the magics and miseries of the internet is that it allows us to pretend to be anything we want to be, whether we believe it of ourselves or not.

we often hear that social media is a “highlight reel,” not real life, showing only our good sides — or the good we pretend to be. on the internet we can be brave and cool in ways we don’t actually feel.

in a world that centers our ability to succeed as individuals, we can become so enlightened that we forget to be real.

but we are living in a loneliness epidemic. people are the smartest they’ve ever been — the most globally connected — and it has only served to push us apart. the facades we’ve built have become walls between us. we crave bridges. we want to tear those walls down, even when we don’t realize it — we often don’t recognize that that’s what we need to do to bring us closer together.

sometimes, though, we cling tightly to those walls because they’re all we know. we’re terrified to find out who we might be behind the fortresses we’ve built, scared of the soft and tender bits that might become exposed. instead, we become haters. we roll our eyes at enthusiasm. we call sincerity cringe. 

anyone who knows me knows i have been a hater — and found joy! it can be fun to discover a shared connection in hate! — but i have found so much more joy in being a lover. i have found deeper, more sustainable connections in shared love.

in yoga, i’ve learned to expand my body heart-first, to invite surrender by stretching myself wide open. the heart needs expansion. it needs to be cracked wide open. it wants, desperately, to invite others in, to not remain a wild thing trapped inside its bone-white cage. it is fluttering, begging to be set free, to be a soft thing that “loves what it loves,” as mary oliver wrote.

it is only by revealing who we are that we can find kindred spirits, that we can attract the things we want to us. who we are is a flame drawing in moths — when we pretend to be who we’re not we call in things and people who do not align with our spirits. we deny ourselves the privilege and pleasure of being seen, of being known.

i wish that privilege and pleasure for all of us, that by softening we may better see and experience the connections between us. that we melt into each other in ways that are supportive and lovely and sweet. 

may we exhale to create space for all that we are and all that we can be. may we inhale all the joyous possibility of kinship and community.

here’s my invitation to you: crack open the door, just a little. let yourself be seen, even in small ways. tell someone you love their laugh. wear your heart on your sleeve, even if it feels silly. risk the cringe. risk the softness. risk being known.

the world is heavy, but we don’t have to carry it alone.

stay soft, stay true.

<3,

n.

p.s.

• “laura, i want you / pulling your hair back” by natalie dunn

• shot and chaser

• this too

• a thoughtful read on communities vs cliques

• and some small steps to get you started

• listening: made a playlist out of a couple songs that were bouncing around in my head while writing this newsletter

• reading: fang fiction was sweet and cute and funny and touching and all about learning how to open your heart to the unexpected.

• watching: let’s not talk about how destroyed i am by having the pitt and the last of us happening as back-to-back seasons. my heart is happy and overwhelmed in equal measure.